A Little Guide to Print Design

[Qoo]

Hey Guys,

Recently I have seen people coming here asking for logos for their businesses.

I see quite a number of designers here making such logos but there is actually a proper way to make logos. I just decided to tell you guys about it so that you could take part in design competitions such as 99designs (even though they pay shit, it's still 10x higher than KWWH).

So basically, there are multiple colour modes to choose from. The most common are RGB and CMYK.

Most of the logos designed here (if not all) are made in RGB colour format. These logos look great in screen but when you print them out the colours get all mixed up and in most cases it looks very different than what you expect especially if you wanted specific colours to be in there.

On the other hand, CMYK might look bad on your screen but that's what you need when you print out. It's almost like a what-you-see-is-what-you-get colour mode for printing. Don't try to be very fancy with colours because the printing would just cost more. If you are printing in mass, you actually get charged on per colour.

P.S: CMYK can't save to transparency (no .png format)

Next, once the client has finalized the details, please don't hand him a JPEG as a final result because JPEG is a compressed format and would cause issues when you print. TIFF is highest quality and you can disable photoshop editing compatiblity. Alternatively, you can even pass a PDF file as it retains the quality as well. EPS (for vector logos) is effective for logos too!

The other issue I have realised is that most of you work in Photoshop for logos. Photoshop renders images in raster format. There is another software called Illustrator - it's great for logos as your work is in vector so you can design something small and pass the EPS file to your client so he can resize it as he wills.

However, I understand most of you wouldn't want to install another software especially since you are not too familiar with it. There is a solution for this as well, just use smart objects and shapes in photoshop while doing your logo. Make sure you don't rasterize anything that way you get a vector logo.

Sometimes it's just hard to ensure the logo is fully in vector and it's not worth taking the time (if the client is paying little) so for that you ensure you design in a kick ass resolution. Something like 3000x3000 is way more than enough but make sure you change the DPI to 300 instead of 72 (web format).

If you follow these steps, it would make your client's job much easier whenever he wants to use the logo

But remember, this is for prints and not for web. If the logo is going to be used ONLY for web then carry on with RGB 72 dpi.

Hope this helps those who are new to photoshop.

Qoo Reviewed by Qoo on 19th May 2012. A Little Guide to Print Design Hey Guys, Recently I have seen people coming here asking for logos for their businesses. I see quite a number of designers here making such logos but there is actually a proper way to make logos. I just decided to tell you guys about it so that you could take part in design competitions such as 99designs (even though they pay shit, it's still 10x higher than KWWH). So basically, there are multiple colour modes to choose from. The most common are RGB and CMYK. Most of the logos Rating: 5

[AllSolo]

You are wrong CMYK can be transparently cuz i am working at printhouse & design company i know that and thanks i worked on freelancer and 99design, but this will help thoose one who is new and dont know about it

[Qoo]

My bad, I meant it can't be saved as .png format but if you carry along the PSD or TIFF/EPS, transparency works fine.

[AllSolo]

Theire is a little trick to save CMYK image to PNG Save for web and devices and chouse PNG 24 but you will lose some quality

[Skords]

There is only one way to save CMYK mode images as transparent (for web).
Users on KWWH are generally looking for logos for their WEBSITES, there are hardly any users looking for print designs, so RGB works well. The only thing they should keep in mind is to not rasterize anything.
And yes, from my past experience, clients do not ask for PSDs or Ai, they only need PDFs or ESPs for printing(CMYK MODE).